MOOP MAP LIVE, Day 3: Esplanade and the Big Black Spot

Hello sports fans, MOOP maniacs and line sweepers extraordinaire! The Hun here, reporting from Gerlach where things are starting to get VERY exciting for the DPW Playa Restoration team.

MOOP flees in fear from the intrepid team of Bad Ash, Drink Water and Deadpan.

On Day Three of Line Sweeps, your Black Rock City home team swept through the remainder of the back blocks, then made a daring rush up the 10:00 edge and onto the Esplanade. Now in peak condition and thoroughly trained for the task, our Restoration MOOPers were eager to tackle the double-wide blocks of Esplanade and Anniversary, the very center of Burning Man’s epic antics.

What will our brave Restoration team find on 10:00 and Esplanade? Will those heavily-trafficked blocks be Go-Go-Go Green, or Full Stop Red? Read on to find out…

Click to enlarge!

Wow folks, that’s what you call a mixed bag. DA, Playa Restoration manager, had this to say:

The outer playa along 10:00 where the sound camps tend to cut loose was fairly messy. Solid yellow with smatterings of red and a significant Red area between C-D. The open playa area around 10:15 between Esplanade and A was a challenging mess and slowed us up considerably. This spot earned the color of BLACK, which is only awarded to the worst, most time-consuming messes. The Special Forces Crew easily clocked in 50 man hours between 15 people restoring that site alone before getting it under control.

So far, so good. The Esplanade is mostly Green, with a handful of partially Red camps slowing us down to a crawl here and there.

Wondering what we found in those red zones? Our Special Forces report the following:

8:30 & Esplanade: Wood debris and particle board, confetti, plastic debris and metal hardware.8:00 & Esplanade: An apparently small-ish pile of wood chips which had unfortunately been dragged all over the block. A clear case of “never let it hit the ground.”7:40 & Esplanade: A huge amount of wood chips, apparently from disintegrated OSB, that had blown throughout a large area.7:20 & Esplanade: Wood debris, pneumatic staples, metal hardware… and crawfish legs and shells.

Yes, crawfish.

What was in the BLACK spot? Oh… EVERYTHING.

On hands and knees, the Special Forces team cleans the playa's messiest spots.

Yes, that’s some rough stuff folks — but look at all those green blocks! Considering how many people (and crawfish) the Esplanade camps served, they left a pretty clean playing field for our Restoration team.

The Hun, also known as J.H. Fearless, has been blogging for Burning Man (and many other outlets) since 2005, which is also the year she joined the BRC DPW on a whim that turned out to be a ten-year commitment. Since then she's won some awards for blogging, built her own creative business, and produced some of the Burning Blog's most popular stories and series. She co-created a grant-funded art piece, "Refoliation," in 2007, and stood next to it watching the Man burn on Monday night during a full lunar eclipse. She considers that, in many ways, to have been the symbolic end of Burning Man that was. The Hun lives in Reno with DPW Shade King, Quiet Earp. You may address her as "The Hun" or "Hun". If you call her "Honey" she reserves the right to cut you.

I was wondering though, what happens at large/popular art? I’ve never seen it on the map but I’ve seen lots of MOOP in these areas during the event, and surely not all artists are responsible enough (or have the manpower) to deMOOP their areas after taking down their art. Does the playa restoration team deMOOP these areas and they just doesn’t get mapped?

Hey guys (and gals)…just wanted to say a big THANK YOU! for all your hard work out there. That picture of you all out there on your knees mooping was pretty moving. It really shows how difficult and time-consuming your jobs are. Thanks again!

Wow, I am amazed at this level of dedication and I appreciate your hard work, Playa Restoration Crew!!!!!!!!!! The sound camp people gave a lot to my enjoyment, and I’m sure a lot of people enjoying the music dancing and revelry are very much responsible for any red areas….always room for improvement….a challenge to be met next year, for certain!!!!!!

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all your hard work. You are what makes it possible for us to come back every year, and for that, we all owe you our deepest gratitude. THANK YOU, DPW Restoration Crew!

@Jody: uhm, you noticed a lot of MOOP near some of the major art? maybe it would have been nice to pick it up. We try to always keep a MOOP container (be it cloth bag or modified water jug) on our bikes for just such occasions.

Last year after the man burn I was out early doing a little MOOPing and enjoying the morning light. Someone asked me if picking up Trash was my job. I told them it was everyone’s job…but they just looked confused and rode off.

I’d love to see more people MOOPing the open playa and around the porta potties and …well… Everywhere! It’d be nice to see the MOOP crew off the playa in a couple of days instead of weeks.

playa resto does hit the big art areas as well as everything between the man and esplanade. Mostly, I think the big sound camps have the largest challenge of us all for creating a space where people come to get ‘loose’ and zombie themselves out all night long. Cigarette butts and glow stick connectors galore. How does one police their streetfront where thousands of people show up each night to dance and lose their (figurative and literal) shit? daily moop sweeps… day labor… having the human power spending time after the big name dj’s have left in their fancy rv’s to crawl through their dancefloors and erase the traces? it’s a huge challenge.

i guess it’s a matter of setting priorities…what is more important? Large sound camps that entertain the masses but can’t fulfill the leave no trace requirement, or the leave no trace requirement (ethic)? Maybe the size of a camp should be determined more by their ability to adhere to the principles and ability to MOOP than it should by its size and entertainment value? Continuing to complain about it while doing all the work of cleaning up after them gives no incentive for them to even try to leave no trace, and actually discourages others to want to follow the policy as well. Might “Too big to MOOP” mean “Too big to be on the playa”?

Hi guys, my camp’s been trying to figure out what our MOOP report means. We were on the corner of 8 and Esplanade (the 7:55 corner) and it’s all green except a long rectangular shape labeled red. That’s about the size and shape of our evaporation pool, but everyone swears it was packed away cleanly, and I remember checking out the area myself after takedown, and it was all good. Please reply to me if you have an idea how our evap pool left a trace? Or if you know the address where we can direct this inquiry?
This is mostly curiosity on my part, but could also impact our placement next year
Thanks

I’m asking everyone to weigh in on this issue, and it would be great to have your opinions as part of that discussion.

Jody – Like NikO says, we do hit all the art sites. They don’t always get marked on the MOOP Map, but we definitely clean them up as necessary, and communicate with artists if there’s a mess left behind. It’s really the artist’s responsibility to MOOP their own site — *nobody* should be relying on Playa Restoration to take care of cleaning up for them. In fact, I believe the Artery requires honorarium artists to MOOP their sites before they can leave (and receive their final check).

John Kisha, alexis, Baby Squid – We love to do it! Your gratitude means a lot, though. Thank YOU for caring.

Bean – Neck punch, CHECK. Bad Ash is an Aussie, however, and Deadpan seems set on staying in St. Louis. No accounting for taste eh?

Dusty Rusty – Yes, it would be amazing to work ourselves out of a job because there was no MOOP to be found! Thanks for your contributions, and please keep up the good work. You’re the best.

Victoria – great question! Evap ponds and showers usually leave a different sort of trace. There may not be a lot of visible MOOP in the area, but there will often be water stains and damage to the playa surface, which needs to be raked and broken up. In some cases, the dirt is contaminated with gray water and actually needs to be removed. Also, many evap ponds leave behind matted hair, bits of food and other small debris. The Restoration crew then winds up digging your hair and eggshells out of the playa with their hands, a pretty unpleasant task. It may be that you had a leak, or that you simply didn’t MOOP with enough attention to detail. I’m not sure if we can give you the exact details of what we found, but if that’s where your evap pond was, then next year you should spend a lot more time cleaning up your evap pond. Nice job on the rest of your camp, though!

@Dusty Rusty, of course I pick it up! If I normally see MOOP in an area though, that means there’s more that I wasn’t able to find, more that was dropped after I left, etc. I can’t deMOOP everything myself!

I stop to pick up MOOP if I see some on my bike (or chase it down, which is exciting.) I’ll admit I don’t always pick up MOOP around the potties because there’s just so much of it. And once in 2008 I found a huge number of zip tie ends around an installation (OK, it was the tetris blocks) and left them because there were more than my girlfriend and I could handle alone. But you know why not picking up MOOP stands out in my mind? Because I almost always pick it up!

Jody, sorry for making an assumption. Oh, and I hated 2010…spent a lot of time running after red feathers blowing around deep playa. now that I think about it we probably looked crazy chasing around after stuff people at a distance couldn’t see.

My camp and I spent 6 hours in the exodus line. We played a lot of chess and hide and go seek, it was probably the most fun I’ve ever had waiting in line anywhere, but that said, I bet had we known we would be in line for 6 hours, we could have put our time to better burner use.

It struck me after reading this blog post that a lot of people might have been in the same possition, so I thought why not see if people would be willing to spend time they would normally have spent waiting in line to do moop sweeps on the troublesome areas (seems like sound camp areas are the ones that get the most moop traffic if I’m reading the older maps correctly) of BRC.

I suppose the trouble would be “organizing” that… Anyway, deffinitely going to consider leaving later next year and sticking around to help deMoop the projected trouble spots.

This is year 7 coming up – lucky me! Had no issue leaving getting up Sun AM and rolling quietly out of dodge. But I hear the treck issue. (yes I demooped)

How about when you buy your ticket, you get a preferred time to leave printed on the ticket. that same time would help people decide what ticket to get during purchase: number of tickets + time to leave + date of purchase + eligible discount = ticket price.

If you show up at your exit with the preferred time window, you get to enter that line and treated like a HOV preference. This would encourage people to plan their exit in consideration for the limited resources and bandwidth.

Carry a small trash bag with for any possible moop disposal. Tie it to your bike and there you are….I agree there should be responsibility of the people that go to the big camps, since BM is more of an honor system, hoping the spirit of the Man gets through to people who choose to attend.

OOOO just read Smenkare’s post…how about gifting a quicker exodus line to people who participate in a certain amount of time on Moop patrol outside those big camp areas that were heavy before they exodus?????? Positive reinforcement…..

Thank you guys!!!! Seeing your photo working on restoring the Playa really made an impression! Even more attention to MOOP next year then on my side, being a first year burner, a picture like the one you posted, really explains much better the amount of work that you do with love to allow us to go Home again! And patiently waiting for results on our camp! Love and hugs to all of you!

That red area on the Playa at 10:00 & D was where the 1″ of rebar was sticking up. No doubt U got it or it was no longer there.

I’m a MOOP maniac on the Playa (I walk everywhere with plenty of room in my backpack) . . . found a gram of weed (thought it was tobacco when I picked it up) and bit of coke? (tiny zip-lock) on separate occasions this year.

Two years ago (didn’t go last year ’cause I knew the Playa was not smooth) I found a camera (found the owner on this forum’s lost & found), also found a 10-strip (tiny zip-lock) and some ‘shrooms (separate occasions, the latter in a baggie).

I have been one of the head people on a major soundcamp for the last 8 years. Besides spending TONS of my own money, Months of time away from work, and even more time away from home in order to make the camp happen, I am always the last on the playa cleaning up as well. Last year we got kicked off the playa on thursday night by BLM under the threat of multiple 500 dollar fines. There was over 15 of us still there cleaning. We are left cleaning up after all of you. Everyone makes a mess when they go to have fun for the night. it just happens. And most of you have probably been at our camp at least once. Stuff falls out of peoples pockets, people lose or forget things. we had almost half of a 20ft uhaul full of OTHER Peoples trash. Our trash disposal budget is about 400 dollars and Our campers all pack out their own mess (mostly). Just remember that most of these camps are trying their best to leave the playa clean but it is not easy when 20,000 people visit and party at your camp. the 10 and esplanade black is a tragedy. i went by there. it looked like they didn’t even sweep it at all. We have gotten mostly green the last few years but when we have gotten yellow or even some red spots we never knew what the problem was therefore we didn’t even know how to fix it for the next year. I am really excited about the way the moop map is being done this year. Hopefully we start getting the feedback we need to start improving. Thanks Restoration team!

We’re super stoked that our plan worked!! Green, green and green. :-) Here’s how we did it: as with every other part of our program, we simply put someone in charge of it. Our LNT lead did the research into best practices ahead of time, scheduled and trained *others in our camp* on the moop sweeps, was the camp go-to person for questions and ideas and (etc) throughout our two weeks on the playa, creating the perfect atmosphere for us to hold ourselves accountable. So cool to see it reflected here! Super thanks to the PRT for the work you’re doing and the feedback your sending back!!

please erase my previous post on this page due to typos from strong coffee, sorry

WOW! I camped @ 10 & E. I was amazed by the disrespect our turf got during the event. Not surprised that our neighbor’s area was BLACK. Folks were leaving everything behind, from BBQs to oriental rugs. BASTARDS were pissing around my truck & stashing their garbage bags. Every morning I was shocked by the garbage littered around our stage. The toilet paper was everywhere!!! HAVING TO BRING YOUR OWN TOILET PAPER WILL SOLVE THAT. What the fk is with all the water bottles, seriously, NOT ONLY ARE THEY MOOPY, BOTTLED WATER IS RIDICULOUS AND MAKES YOU LOOK LIKE A IGNORANT, ANOYING, CONSUMING, E-TARDED, SPOILED, RESOURSE WASTING PIG!!! IT IS TIME FOR RVs TO BE BANNED! EDWARD ABBEY WOULD AGREE. I hope privileges are not granted next year for the MOOPY MOTHER FKRS – SERIOUSLY, BASECAMP WORKED EXTEAMLY HARD TO KEEP OUR HOOD UNDER WRAPS! BIG UPS FOR UTAH! BIG UP FOR THE COPS THAT RESPECTED US AND HELPED KEEP US SAFE! THANK YOU OLDSCHOOLERS FOR TAKING CARE OF THE KIDS. THANK YOU BMAN CREW FOR PROVIDING US A CHANCE TO SPREAD OUR WINGS! BMAN NEEDS TO BE PRESERVED! IT GIVES US A NEW OPORTUNITY TO DREAM A DIFFERENT DREAM AND TO MAKE THOSE DREAMS A REALITY! THANK YOU FOR THE TEMPLE AND GIVING US A CHANCE TO FEEL A NEW SPIRIT! MUCH LOVE!!!

The crawfish legs are almost certainly from my camp (Lonesome Gator Gumbo Cookery in the Black Rock French Quarter).

I am trying to figure out how to deal with this for the future. Is it possible to get a little more information on what was found and where? Were the legs in the picture the biggest pieces found?

We put down tarps and swept the area after the public crawfish boil Tuesday night. If those are the size of the pieces found, my guess is that they were tracked off the tarps on people’s shoes and fell off a bit away from the actual location. If that is the case I need to think of some solution or just not hold the crawfish boil next year, which would be unfortunate as people had an amazing time.

Anyway I would appreciate getting some more detail so I can figure out if there is a solution.

If you want, you can contact me off this page at josh.prime.bm on google mail.

HOORAY for GREEN in Camp Ynot! 6:45 & H cleaned up nice! We promise to keep up the good work next year and encourage others to do the same! Thank you, thank you, thank you for all of your hard work! To the folks who fueled the MOOP fire, karma is a bitch.

Can anyone tell me how much moop was by the porta potties this year… I was camped right by them at 9:30 and H and I spent a lot of time rescuing rolling toilet rolls, tampon wrappers, a few errant tampons (OMG Ladies OMG!)and misc. plastic cups that kept falling out the doors of the porta potties and blowing away… After a while, I just kept the rolls that I found rolling in the wind in my truck and then in the morning when there was no toilet paper, I would pass it out to the people standing there… I just got tired of returning one blowing around roll at a time. My camp tried real hard to pick up Moop… I was rewarded by the Moop Gods by a large bag of trash that someone “gifted” me Monday morning by placing it right by the door of my truck camper, as if Santa (from Hell) had just stopped by…. I brought it home and threw it away, but seriously that blew big chunks…. take home your own trash children.

Some people just don’t get it. I tried to explain to some fratboy types last year why they should not be having their Silly String fight. Their assumption was that as long as the string dries up into dust, it’s okay.

IT’S NOT OKAY. It’s some rather nasty toxic chemicals that have now become one with the playa. Just because you can’t SEE the trace you leave doesn’t mean it’s not there. This goes for your gray water, your piss, and the glitter you trail after you…

Why would ANY sound camp and their organizers want to come to BM with the excruciating burden placed upon them? they don’t have show up in the first place. Be high and mighty and have NO gratitude for how beautiful wonderful the sounds camps are and what amazing experiences they create for BM participants. Don’t acknowledge the slave like efforts that it takes to get a sound camp up and running, particularly one as spectacular as Temple of Boom. I for one, LOVED Temple of Boom and connecting with all the thousands and thousands of people there every night. It was THE place to be. I hate the trashing, criticizing, threatening, shaming, and belittling. With out the sound camps BM would only be half the wonderful experience that I had at BM. Thank you Temple of Boom. Thank you to all the sound camps I went to every night.

Smenkare, Monkeygurl – I love the idea of letting Exodus folks get involved in MOOPing!! Yes, organizing it could be difficult… or it could be easy, if you planned it out right. Just one “MOOP taxi” ferrying people to and from the Exodus line… think that’s something you could try to organize for next year?

Daryl – Interesting idea. I don’t really know how all that is organized, but maybe you can talk to the Gate about it.

666isMONEY – We actually find tons of rebar, so I’m sure we got that one and now we’ll recycle it for cash ;) I love good groundscores too, found some great stuff in my day.

soundcamp cleaner – Your story is EXACTLY what people need to hear. I don’t think anyone, including DPW, knows just how much trash y’all have to deal with. Is there some way you could do more education at your camp, maybe having the DJs make announcements, or organizing community line sweeps? Seems like if you had more help from your visitors, everything would be a little better. Thank you for all you do.

CULT – Uh, that was a lot of yelling. I feel your pain and anguish, but try not to be quite so aggressive okay? You do make a good point about water bottles, and I’m glad you’re bringin’ the love. Keep on doing the best you can, that’s all we can do.

Leighann – Yay Ynot!!

Mercedese Witty – The potties are always sort of a war zone. When you MOOP those areas, always wear rubber gloves okay? We spend a fair amount of time cleaning up porta potty banks, raking out the soil and removing any “blue juice” that fell on the playa. It is a mess, but a necessary one, so it’s okay.

AG – Oh, haha… I have cleaned up a lot of silly string out here. I know what you’re talking about. Also, lots of people think that “natural” MOOP like pistachio shells and wood chips are okay, but they’re not. The education continues…

brodi wan – Yes, that’s part of it. But there’s also the fact that the theme camps aren’t actually the ones leaving all that MOOP. It’s the people who come to visit, and theme campers wind up cleaning up after thousands. So it’s tough.

Hi guys! Thank you so much for the work that you are doing!!! If I had the resources to be there I would (alas, work rent and bills beckon my presence). I am so grateful that we have folks who are able to be there to clean up the wreckage of our presence on the Playa.